


Ruffled

by herbailiwick



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crossdressing, M/M, POV Second Person, Reichenbach Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 11:55:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herbailiwick/pseuds/herbailiwick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Secret Santa gift for rufflemyjimmies.</p><p>Johnlock with 2nd person POV (John is "I", Sherlock is "you"). Rated PG-13 for sexual situations. Includes a bit of crossdressing and some Reichenbach angst.</p><p>Some things with Sherlock are more comfortable than John had thought they would be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ruffled

You, Sherlock, know how I like my tea. I'll grant you that, and more.

You know how often I go to the toilet, what I like to watch on the telly, the name of the football team I played on (poorly) as a child, my height and weight and shoe size just by looking, and a ninety-nine percent accurate account of where I've been and what I've been doing and who I've done it with, also just by looking. You know how much I'll probably dislike something, and, annoyingly, how much I'll probably let you get away with doing. 

You could theorize about me for days, I think, without a break. I really think you could.

But you don't have all the data.

You hate when I tell you that. It makes your face scrunch up, which makes it nice to say, like a secret weapon that wins the battle if I don't use it every time. I won't deny I take a bit of pleasure in that scrunched-up face because that weapon is sometimes the only defense I've got, you spy, you deducer, you...jackass. But when I use it, I feel bad, too, because I see how much you wish you _did_ know everything about me. You want to know everything about everything.

One of my favorite things is my privacy. I think you learn not to take it for granted when you've become a soldier, and once more when you've become flatmates with a man who thinks its his right to know everything just because he's nearly capable of it. 

Yes, I mean _you_ , Sherlock. You bloody mad thing.

***

Here's something you might not know: I wouldn't have cared if you were a fake.

Seriously, to go and off yourself? Don't you know you're my best friend? Well...you _were_.

You're gone now, and you're a real prick, do you know that? We could have worked through it all. I believe in _you_ , Sherlock. You, for who you are, not for what you've done. Which makes me more than a bit mad, but I already knew that about myself.

I'm sorry you didn't know it too.

Perhaps I should have told you. 

***

I suddenly discover that I'm full of secrets. It's like they're crawling under my skin. There are things I kept to myself that you would have cared about, that you probably _shouldn't_ have cared about, but that no one else ever will.

My secrets were more valuable to you when you were alive than they are to me now, I realize. 

Because seriously, who cares about me? There was only one person who ever did, truly.

I've never been anything special. Not to Da, not to my mum, not to my teachers when I acted out.

Not to anyone at college, at uni, not really in the army even.

***

I don't do it. I don't kill myself. No point in doing that; I keep that picture of the two of us near the gun, started doing that when I still felt numb, just after. I'm not so numb anymore. It's a nice photo, and you actually look relaxed in it, almost happy, so there's no sense in upsetting you by grabbing the gun, is there? 

***

"Did you know I once got E. coli over a bet?"

You don't answer because you're six feet underground, actually under the ground where I'm standing, though it's nicer to imagine you've just been shocked into silence.

***

"I embarrassed my whole school at a talents competition," I tell your headstone. No response. You're a prick.

Well, and you're dead. That's worse.

***

I'm going to need to see you again, aren't I?

***

I tell you stories. I tell you how truly flawed I am because I think you didn't always recognize that, not that I probably wanted you to. I tell you the truth about how I'd felt for Clara, about what kind of nightmares I've had since you've been gone, about what I wish I could do to try and make things different.

I talk to the skull too. Mrs Hudson gave it to me, made me promise to watch over it, said it didn't belong with her for good. I gave her a look, but she was adamant. 

A skull, vulnerable, open, blank. What penetrable things we are, human beings. Full of bones that break and all sorts of sacks and fluids and tissues and systems and rhythms. We're beautiful, but delicate. We're like a priceless piece of art from the beginning of time. 

I've read up on you, you know. Because, let's be honest: I like to spy too. I'm paranoid. I've read up on your postmortem, is what I mean. Broken bones, bright red blood, dead eyes, a gaze that has haunted my dreams. That's not just an expression, Sherlock. You've haunted my dreams.

Though, you haunted my life much more. It's the absence of you that rings the wrongest. It's the lack of new experiments, the lack of your arranging the furniture to make a point, of ridiculous bets I always lost where the stakes are who does the washing-up, who makes tea, whether or not the thumbs get thrown out just yet, whether I cancel my date.

It's the emptiness that hurts. Change can be hard, especially when you have to deal with it alone. Especially when it seems like far too few people understand the loss, or even agree that it _was_ a loss.

I tell the skull about the sadness, the loss, and it helps, honestly. I can see why you did it. Then again, I could always see why you did it. I'm no stranger to loneliness, but it's like coming back to a hometown I'd been dying to get out of and realizing I'd only ever had the _illusion_ of an Elsewhere.

***

I punch your face. 

You deserve it for pushing me into my old familiar town of loneliness, for causing me to open up while you were gone. This is what you've unlocked, Sherlock.

Actually, you look like you've been pretty lonely too. Your face is solid where I struck it, and I know you're real, no ghost or superhero, just a regular old mass of blood and bones and sacks and fluids and whatever else, which makes you just like me. 

Makes you a bit too much like me, actually. I'm your only friend and I've never died, so you don't know this, but dead mates reach a sort of nostalgia-borne sainthood. No one should ever saint you, but I've done it. Yes, you, the man with a tendency to contaminate my food and my relationships and my whole bloody life.

You're here, and you're darker and quieter and _less_ of yourself, and why _should_ I owe you so much, or even owe you at all, you liar, but, Christ, come here, just, come here.

Because you're still my best friend. That's why. That'll always be why.

There should be so many things wrong with that, but it's not like anyone's ever even _tried_ to saint me. I'm short and uninteresting, not too fond of myself and not willing to convince anyone into it who's less mad than you are.

***

You brought back souvenirs. You have little foreign knickknacks, a couple books in languages I don't read that you find places for on the shelves like it's no big deal, and photos of exotic locales, photos I know for a fact that you took yourself. You can take pictures of evidence, sure, can get in all the proper parts and adjust the focus. But when it comes to a beautiful landscape, to a famous building, to a shop few even know about, your skills are severely lacking, like perhaps you still don't quite understand beauty, like you're so secretly in awe of it that....

Well, there I go, waxing poetic about you. I'm far too glad to have you back. My appreciation for you drives me.

Before I know it, I begin to rework our old compromises, begin to spy on you, to try and deduce. I've never had a knack for it like you, but you seem so glad to be back, so...in awe of the beauty of us being together again...that you stop being so insanely aware, to an extent. To an extent, you...relax, a fact which makes me in awe of _you_.

The tables are turned now, Sherlock. You like your privacy now, and I am dying to figure you out. Because I lost you, but now you're back. You're the sand trying to slip away, and you fell through my fingers, but now you've gotten damp and you're just sitting there, a fragile castle I want to grab up again. You won't slip away if I try it, but I'll have broken you, and I can't do that.

Sometimes, I wish you weren't back. That's how far away you seem when you're a little, damp castle.

You don't pry like you used to want to, and that hurts like it probably isn't supposed to. You're going through some sort of whatever, wrestling with demons I couldn't name because I can't deduce, not even when you've brought back foreign clues.

***

"Well?" I ask, standing in front of you, arms apart, offering a good view of myself all the way down to the drying mud on my shoes, mud I went well out of my way to walk round in.

"Mm?" You just sort of tilt your head at me. You speak finally, slowly, carefully picking out your words and presenting them with uncertainty. "I don't understand what it is you want from me," you say.

I glare at you and want to yell at you. I don't, of course. I hardly ever do.

"I've upset you," you say, and then it's like I can breathe again.

"Yes, you did," I say. I come and sit near you, smile a little. "I just went and walked round in the mud so you'd look at my shoes and tell me where I'd been."

"Oh!" you say, the sound awkwardly pulled from your lips. "Okay."

Slowly, you sit up, let your fingers steeple like they like to when you get like this, rest them against your mouth for a moment, and wait as I go stand up again. 

And you tell me, then. You tell me where I was, for about how long I walked about, the fact I saw a pretty girl there, which makes me feel a bit embarrassed because I actually turned her down, which you tell me when you see me react to your deduction about her.

"You know, you're really too much," I tell you, but I'm grinning.

"Or am I not enough?" you say with quiet amusement, like you think you're funny, and, considering how you've been quite distant lately, I have to agree with you. 

I sigh and shake my head and tell you I'm glad to have you back. It's not the first time I say it, and it won't be the last.

***

I start telling you stories at breakfast, mostly the ones I'd told your grave and the skull. You like them. You get all quiet and receptive and sort of awed, like you appreciate me a lot more since you've come back, just as I appreciate you a lot more. 

You make fun of my problems with betting and gambling and taking risks, and that's nothing new, but now you've got data from the past to support your observations as well, so you're a bit insufferable. I let it go cause you seem genuinely upset about the sadder tales I've got to tell, tales of pain and loss that didn't come from some gamble.

You begin to become what I think of as Past Sherlock almost, except with a new tint of solemn, quiet thankfulness, a sort of not-all-there quality that I want to crack open and diagram.

When I notice my door is more ajar than when I'd left for the shops, I think you might really be coming back to me on our old terms, which is fantastic.

***

"John, do you have feelings for me?"

I'm in the middle of pouring hot water for tea, and I nearly drop the kettle. I manage to set it down and turn to look at you. "Yes," I say very frankly. "I mean, it's clear that we get on. My friendship with you is the longest relationship I've ever had." I swallow nervously as you process the new data.

"That's interesting," you say with a little furrow of your brow. "Here, I'll help," you say, pushing me aside to fix the tea.

"Ta." I watch you work. "Sherlock, we can put thumbs in the freezer and such again, if you'd like."

You glance at me, sort of mouth the word "like" in silence once, then turn quickly back to finishing up the tea.

"I'll come with you and help you pick out something to experiment on," I say.

"I'm not who I was," you say, your back still turned. 

"Neither am I," I point out. "But you're still my best friend. In fact, somehow, we might even be closer now."

"I don't understand, though." You turn and hand my mug to me. "I mean, you couldn't have really missed me so much that you'd like heads in the fridge again." You raise a brow.

"I don't like heads in the fridge. Most people don't. But I don't see you do little things for yourself much anymore, and I'd like you to keep heads in the fridge if you'd like to. Within reason," I add quickly.

You turn back toward your mug, take it up, take it into the next room, and I'm not sure whether or not you're ignoring me, so I don't press.

***

There's a foot in the fridge. But, it's okay. You've contained it like we'd agreed on.

It's still a bit off-putting, will never not be, but I'm proud of you.

***

It's not long before I catch you rummaging round on my desk, and when I fully stand in the doorway, you whip around, then, having tensed, relax, resting your hip against my desk, and I eye the line of your body because, hey, you were naughty first.

"Welcome back, Sherlock," I say with a roll of my eyes. It's not the first time I say it, and it won't be the last.

I head back downstairs to let you at my room. "You're alright with me doing this?" you call out, poking your head out the door.

"More than," I say honestly because honesty is just a bit addicting. It's kind of like a gamble, really, when you're being honest about things like feelings.

When you come out, you look concerned. You're holding that picture of us, and I'd shot through it.

I reach for it and take it from you, eyeing the damage. "Okay," I say with a sigh, catching the hopeful questioning lined with hesitant fear swimming around together in your gaze. "I kept this near my gun for a bit, just so I wouldn't end things. And don't look at me like that," I say quickly, swallowing and avoiding your concern because it's all in the past now. "One day, I got more angry at you than sad, and I just," I mime a gun with my hand, "Pow! So, there you are."

"You hid this," you say with distaste. "Like a dirty little secret."

I laugh, which concerns you even more. "Sherlock," I explain, "if you want dirty secrets, I've got plenty. I've got so many, still. Even with all the stories I've told you, we've never even gotten into my family life." I shake my head. "And there's worse in my bedroom, trust me."

You glance at the ruined photo in its ruined frame, then back at me. "That's a safety hazard," you point out.

" _You're_ a safety hazard," I point out. You let out a chuckle, surprised, once again, at me, at the fact that you're even laughing, at your _life_. I wonder what happened to you out there. But I'm starting to wonder less and less, as you start to wonder about me more and more.

"How much worse?" you ask.

"In my bedroom? You might want to quit now," I say with amusement, but I'm quite serious all the same because, well, there are things you don't know about me, Sherlock. Though, if you're somewhat interested in returning my feelings, and you absolutely seem to be, you might as well have a peek, haven't you?

You decide to shrug and head to the kitchen to check on some experiments. I try to hide my disappointment, but you catch on and seem to be confused by it.

***

"I thought they belonged to an ex at first," you say hesitantly, but still with an underlying arrogance and comfort and strength and, God, I've missed you.

I reach out and grab my own pair of knickers, grinning, shrugging. "Well, a long time ago, that's how this all started," I admit, remembering the way my ex's knickers, lying forgotten on the floor after she'd raced out and left half a dozen other things behind as well, had seemed to call out to me. I was no stranger to following my impulses, particularly the pointlessly shameful ones.

"I see."

"No, you don't."

"No."

I swallow, curling my fingers into the silky material, feeling just daring enough to ask, "Would you like to?"

You nod a New Sherlock sort of nod.

It's all fine.

***

"Interesting," you say.

"No wisecracks?" I joke, turning a bit. 

"The old John would have been embarrassed."

"And just how do you know that?" I say, but you're right.

"Because I used to not be able to find your stash, but now they're just with the rest of your things."

"I didn't have a nosy flatmate to hide them from anymore."

You smirk at me. "You regretted me not seeing them, when you thought I was dead."

"Oh, go jump off a roof," I joke, not for the first time, and not for the last.

You reach out, suddenly very close, your hand at the waist of my jumper. My lower half is clad only in a pair of socks and the silky blue pair of knickers you'd brought down to me. "Never again," you whisper, and my eyes grow wide and take you in, look over and up at you and drink in your cheekbones and the curls of your hair and, most importantly, the intensity of your gaze. You're so damn _serious_ about holding my waist through my jumper while I sport a pair of light blue knickers.

This should be so much more awkward. Perhaps before the whole jumping off a roof thing, it might have been. It's not now.

"We could...kiss, if you like?" I suggest.

You're surprisingly confident as we lean in. Your grip at my waist tightens just a fraction, your eyes close, then your breath is there against my lips, our lips brush, then move gently with each exhalation. We spend a few moments with our lips just there, slightly parted, so intimately close, aware of the pattern of our breathing. Your other hand comes up to cup my cheek, softly and steadily all at once, and I flick out my tongue and wet your lip, feel you gasp, and you lose your composure and steal kisses like you probably never have before.

I should have done this a long time ago.

***

Your hand actually cups my arse through ruffles I should be embarrassed by, but, honestly, I'm not. I've never felt so comfortable while kissing, while having my arse squeezed. I used to feel like I had to put on some sort of a front, but you've changed that for me. You've somehow freed me.

God, your hands are huge, aren't they?

***

"There's more," you murmur against my neck.

"What?"

"More clothing. More ruffles," you say with a husky voice. How you, Mr. What Are Tits, manage to sound so truly transformed already, so sensuous like some sex god with untapped knowledge of pleasure who's promising both everything I know about it and things I'd never dreamed, I'll never know.

"You like it, then?" I manage to breathe out, my head spinning at the change in you, the, frankly, welcome change, while your hand is still—yes, still!—cupping my arse through the ruffles.

"It's so unlike you." You grip, and I gasp, and you actually tug me closer with both hands on my baskside and, wow.

 _Wow_.

"I love the juxtaposition," you murmur lowly, a dark glint in your eyes as I gaze into them. "I'd like to see more sometime, yes, if you'd like to show me."

I blow out a breath I'd been holding and bite my lip. "Yeah," I say shakily. "Yeah, I can do that."

The new Sherlock Holmes is a strange one. I like him.

***

"So, when did it start?" you ask. "The ruffles."

I shift a little, curling my arms around you even more. "If you leave it til after we rest," I say through a yawn, "I'll tell you anything you want to know."

You smile. It's a good enough answer for the new Sherlock Holmes.

You shift a little, suddenly holding me very tight. I blink my eyes back open, as they'd fallen closed, and you're so serious again.

"What is it?" I ask. I yawn again, stifling it with a hand I curl around you again when the yawn is done. 

"I think, for...for the first time, I feel...home again." You are so incredibly serious.

I smile slowly, lazily. "You are," I tell you. "You're home. It's alright."

You bury your face in my neck, placing a gentle kiss there, murmuring, "I've things to tell you too, John."

"I know."

"You won't make me, I know. But we aren't just best mates anymore."

I yawn again. "No, I suppose not. Alright, seriously now. Sleep, Sherlock." 

"Okay," you say. You smile one of your old smiles. You get up and get the light for us and I admire the view. You're moving with your old confidence.

I fall asleep when you start to run those long fingers through my hair. You're not the only one who's just started to feel at home for the first time.


End file.
